Trump's Big CON: He Won't Be Draining the Swamp, Quite the CONtrary (CONt., Part 4)

"During his seven months in office, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has filled his days meeting with executives from many of the companies he regulates, while all but sidestepping environmental and public health groups. But the face time with industry representatives has extended well beyond his Washington office.

On April 26, for example, Pruitt had lunch with executives from Southern, one of the nation’s biggest coal-burning utilities. They dined at Equinox, a restaurant near the White House, where the baby-carrot-and-red-beet salad with shrimp runs $28. Later that day, Pruitt met with senior leaders at Alliance Resource Partners, a major coal-mining operation, for a dinner at BLT Prime, a steakhouse in the Trump International Hotel, just across from EPA headquarters.

On other occasions, Pruitt traveled to a Ritz-Carlton golf resort in Naples, Fla., for a National Mining Association meeting; to another golf resort in Arizona to speak at a board meeting for the National Association of Manufacturers; and to a resort in Colorado to speak at an event organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The meals with company executives and other evidence of Pruitt’s close ties to industries his agency regulates were laid out in a detailed copy of Pruitt’s calendar obtained by the liberal nonprofit group American Oversight. The New York Times on Tuesday reported details from American Oversight’s Freedom of Information Act request.

The insights into Pruitt’s previously undisclosed meetings add to an already familiar story of how he has spent his time since becoming administrator in February. While EPA leaders traditionally talk with a broad array of stakeholders, Pruitt has overwhelmingly leaned toward meetings with corporate executives in industries regulated by the EPA, and in multiple cases he has quickly ruled in their favor on a range of issues. A more limited version of Pruitt’s schedule from April to September, obtained and reported last month by The Washington Post, showed that he often met with executives from the automobile, mining and fossil fuel industries while only rarely making time for environmental or public health groups. . .

[For more examples, read the article.]

'The EPA has tried very hard to keep Pruitt’s actual work quiet,' Climate Investigations Center Director Kert Davies said in an email. 'It took a court order to get the details we learned today. . . . For Pruitt, it’s the same as it ever was, a lack of transparency and far too cozy connections with the industries he is supposed to be regulating.'"

Read the Washington Post, Fancy dinners, far-flung speeches: Calendars detail EPA chief’s close ties to industry.